38 | Kearney
Sex, he felt, was never only about the sex. Sex was revenge, aggression, a terrorist attack on the world, on women, and on men as well. Every time he fucked a girl — not so many as of yet, but he was young — he knew that he was taking a little bit of her soul away, stealing it from her and locking it deep inside, to nourish himself with. Whenever he had sex, and could make the girl come, and make her remember it, Kearney knew he was planting himself in the girl’s heart and soul like a seed, and he would be there forever, in the background, watching and sneering, controlling. Even if a girl he fucked eventually married someone, and was really in love, he would still have that piece of her, that part she could never take back. It was power: over the woman, and over every man she’d ever be involved with, for Kearney would look on with cruel, gloating eyes at the girls he’d fucked as their decent, kind, weakling lovers tried to give them what he hoped they knew they never could.
The night after the party, he lay in bed with a faint smile on his face, reliving his still-fresh memories of Jen, Jen, Jennifer. That lovely red hair, those pale and bouncing tits; how she had giggled and murmured as he’d laid her out on the bed, her eyes half-closed; how she’d grown confused and scared but he had whispered shhh, it would all be okay, whilst sliding off her knickers, and then he’d laughed and she’d laughed too and from that point on she was eager, pliant, his. Languidly he pulled himself off, stroke after stroke, until he came across his belly, feeling it trickle over his knuckles. A cool night breeze from the skylight caressed his skin, drying his come to a delicate crust. Moments later, Kearney was asleep.
He went back into town a few times to look for the tramp. He wasn’t there, where he always was. There were only shadows, and rubbish blowing down the lane like dead leaves in a world after nature, and a whiff of piss in the empty space where the tramp used to sit.
Each day he carefully scanned all the papers in the newsagents, looking for stories of a dead wino. But there was nothing; that, he knew, was because nobody really gave a fuck. It was like the tramp had disappeared, silently fading from existence down a litter-strewn lane.
Kearney didn’t hear from Matthew after the party. He didn’t expect to. Obviously he was hurt, angry, betrayed. But boredom was boredom, and both of them needed someone to smoke and drink with, and none of the other lads were around.
Kearney waited until Tuesday, then called him.
‘Alright Matthew.’
‘Alright Kearney.’
‘…’
‘So what are you up to?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘…’
Kearney sighed: Matthew was playing hard to get. He couldn’t be bothered humouring him and decided to cut the crap. ‘Are you pissed off with me cos I shagged Jen?’
‘…’
‘I take that as a yes.’
‘…’
Kearney made his voice sound aggrieved. ‘Fuck’s sake, Matthew, she was the one who was all over me. Anyway, it’s only a fuckin shag, man. Yis had broken up, hadn’t yis? Jesus, get over it, will ye?’
‘Yeah well. Ye could have waited a while.’
‘What, half an hour more? Three days? How long? It was a party. I was pissed, she came on to me and we had a screw. Jesus, Matthew. Get over it, would ye. Don’t be a hypocrite. Or have ye forgotten about the time I walked in on you and Rachel, in me own fuckin house? At least you and Jen had broken up when I did it. Fuck’s sake. I won’t be doin it again, anyway.’
‘Yeah, whatever, man.’
‘What are ye up to today?’
‘Fuck all. Watchin telly.’
‘Me ma’s in work. I’ve got a half-ounce here that I bought off Bowser.’
A pause. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. Ye comin around for a smoke?’
‘I dunno.’ Another pause. ‘I was goin to stay here and watch a film.’
‘Stall it. I’ve got the new Kill-Tech game, I borrowed it off Decko Byrne.’
‘Is it any good?’
‘Yeah, it’s deadly. Stall it.’
A final, longer pause.
Then: ‘Right, I’ll be around in a while.’
Kearney hung up.
39 | Matthew
We sat in the dimness of Kearney’s room, the shutter pulled, his shit techno like a coma-pulse on the stereo.
Already we were on the third joint. I lay back into the beanbag, half closing my eyes. It was a weird feeling, being stoned off your head in the middle of the afternoon. There was no way back, you had to deal with it for the rest of the day. I would have to sit there and eat dinner with my ma and da later that evening, tense with concentration, trying hard not to look stoned.
Through the haze of smoke I studied the strips of paper sellotaped randomly across the bedroom walls. It was the same sentence, over and over: ‘You will never defeat us, because you love life and we love death.’
The quote came from some Al-Qaeda warrior. Kearney had talked about getting it done as a tattoo that ran up his bicep, with death on the neck, but he couldn’t afford it. We played Kill-Tech: Obliteration for a while, not talking much. Kearney was already an expert. The triangular hover-fighter responded deftly to every flick of his thumbs and fingers: launching missiles through narrow cracks, obliterating command posts, incinerating enemy personnel. I flew clumsily, bouncing off walls, narrowly avoiding collisions with huge, floating Battlehulks as Kearney pursued me — toyed with me — above an elegant future city.
After some time I flung down my joypad and said: ‘Fuck this, let’s play something else.’
He didn’t respond at first, still fused with the game, the screen. ‘Hah?’ he eventually said, turning around. I had stood up and walked to the window, pulling aside the curtain and looking out over grey suburban nothing. You could see the girls’ school across the road. Kearney had boasted before of how he liked to wank while looking out at the girls, even though it was a primary school and the oldest of them no more than eleven or twelve. I didn’t know if he was making it up.
Kearney changed the techno CD for one that sounded exactly the same, then started rolling another joint.
‘Guess what?’ he said as he twisted the end of the finished spliff.
‘What?’
‘Can ye keep a secret?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Don’t just say “yeah”. Can ye seriously keep a secret? If I tell ye this, ye can’t tell anyone, okay?’
‘What is it? Yeah, okay.’
I took the spliff from Kearney, getting curious.
He paused for dramatic effect. ‘I killed someone,’ he said.
Stoned, I burst into laughter. ‘Fuck off,’ I said, ashing out the window. ‘Don’t give me that bollocks. Ye didn’t kill anyone. Who did ye kill?’
‘Seriously, I did, I killed someone.’ He grinned, dispelling any notion that he was offering a confession.
‘Okay, who did ye kill, then?’ I said, making it obvious I was only humouring him.
‘I murdered this old wino in town. Have ye ever seen the oul lad who sits in that lane in Temple Bar, just off Dame Street? Ye know, the one in behind the Hot Chick?’
‘Oh yeah.’ I pictured the laneway, but not the tramp.
‘The oul lad in there, do ye know him? He’s always in the same spot, total wino, like.’
‘Yeah, I think I know the one ye mean,’ I said, stoned and lazy, to hurry things along. Town was full of alcos and tramps. How was I to know which one Kearney was on about?
‘Well, go into town then, and go down the lane to his place, ye know that doorway he always sits in. And tell me what ye find there. I’ll tell you what ye’ll find: fuck all.’